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'Joshua'

A 9-year-old who never smiles but plays a mean piano, a newborn baby with glass-shattering vocal cords, a mom with postpartum depression, a Bible-thumping granny with boundary issues, a seriously overworked dad — all crammed into an Upper East Side apartment where the upstairs neighbors are noisily remodeling. Sound like a horror story?

Well, yes — and, uh, no. Not really. Which is what provides this initially intriguing psycho-thriller with a modicum of tension: You're not sure for the longest time whether Joshua is a bad seed — he clearly doesn't like the new baby, but what older sibling does? — or whether he's simply having a bad month or two.

Alas, this mystery becomes considerably less mysterious in the film's sluggish second half, and when the story finally tries to wrap itself up, it gets faster, but also gets silly.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.